


The Rhythm of the Night

by Ataraxetta, luninosity



Category: Actor RPF, Marvel Cinematic Universe RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Boxing, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Animator!Chris, Boxer!Sebastian, Established Relationship, Explicit Sexual Content, Fluff, Fluff and Smut, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Porn with Feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-06
Updated: 2014-12-06
Packaged: 2018-02-28 07:42:32
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,493
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2724257
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ataraxetta/pseuds/Ataraxetta, https://archiveofourown.org/users/luninosity/pseuds/luninosity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Chris traces fingertips softly, so softly, around the edge of the worst bruise. Not pain, but the promise of it, mingled with tenderness; that's one of Sebastian's unfailing triggers, that paradox of sensory input, and while Chris doesn't always feel like going there, sometimes he does. Right now, at this moment, he does.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Rhythm of the Night

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Bastille's "Of The Night," because we heard Seb was a fan. 
> 
> Based on the lovely picture of boxer!Seb for GQ Romania. We HAD TO write something.

Chris steps into the bathroom where Sebastian's fresh from the shower and having trouble just getting a towel wrapped around his waist. He's beat to hell and back, dark splotches on his chest and abdomen, a huge, ugly bruise from being slammed into one of the corner posts winding around his flank, already purple-black after only half a day.

He tries, vaguely, to cover himself, instinct to hide the hurt too ingrained to fight, but it hurts to stand up straight and he ends up letting out a quiet gasp of pain, winding an arm around his middle. In the mirror, all the blood has drained from Chris's face, along with the smile he'd had curling his mouth just moments before. His gaze drags from Sebastian's hips, where the towel is slung low, up his torso and finally to meet Sebastian's eyes. Sebastian bites his lip nervously, forces himself to keep eye contact. He watches Chris take a long, deep breath, and tenses when Chris closes the distance between them.

They'd been downstairs in their living room, watching a movie and shooting the shit for a few hours before Sebastian went off to shower, and he hadn't said a word to Chris about the fact that he was more bruise than man, hadn't given a hint that he was hurting. And the hell of it is, he doesn't even know why. Chris was always going to find out - they live together, they share a bed, they have matching bands on their ring fingers. For Christ's sake, Chris is his _husband_ \- and all it did was delay the inevitable and put that awful, half-hurt/half-resigned look on Chris's face that he's wearing now.

He pulls in a shuddering breath as one of Chris's hands - huge and warm and impossibly gentle - grazes over his good side and curve around his hipbone. The other rests on the back of Sebastian's neck, squeezes in a careful massage before sliding over his shoulder and down his arm until their fingers lace together. It's a little terrifying, even after all this time, how much better Sebastian feels for having Chris this close, touching him, holding him. He leans back into Chris's broad chest without really meaning to. He wants to apologize for being such a pain in the ass and promise he'll speak up next time, but it'd be a lie, and two years ago he swore he would never lie to Chris again. That's one that he'll die before breaking.

He squeezes Chris's hand, slides his finger over Chris's ring and feels warmer for it. He tilts his head so their temples touch when Chris's chin hooks over his shoulder, and he meets his gaze in the mirror again. "Love you," Sebastian says.

His words hang in the air like the steam from the shower, misty with heat and unvoiced emotion. One corner of Chris's mouth tilts up, lopsided and accepting. "Love you."

Not much more needs to be said, though it could be. Been there. Argued that. Not now. Chris's ring is tangible true gold under his touch.

Chris's breathing whispers along his skin; Chris's eyes are concerned and fond and a tiny bit wistful, taking in the extent of the ugliness, the stormcloud mementos of unhealed wounds. Sebastian finds himself smiling slightly. It hurts to breathe, yeah. And he's going to have to be careful for the next few days in training. But.

But Chris is here and Chris is looking at him like that. Chris is here and cares and will be here even when annoyed or frustrated, even when Sebastian slips back into old self-protective habits. Those memories of empty nights, of struggling to make it on the boxing circuit, of managers who took one look at his pretty face and laughed, of other men and women who looked at his pretty face and smiled and held out money when Sebastian needed to pay rent...

Those memories aren't gone, but they're layered over with Chris's tidepool eyes and a Boston-Harbor accent saying his name. With a first meeting, colliding in the doorway of a Starbucks, Chris juggling sketchbooks and books on animation and an inside-out umbrella. A spilled hazelnut-caramel mocha and the taste of rain.

He thinks, idly, of the word _palimpsest_. Traces of previous stories making way for something new.

The bathroom's no longer as warm as it once was. Chris kisses his neck. "Want something on that?" The question's a regret and a vow at once, tangled up in that colonial-history voice.

Sebastian nods, thinking of healing salve, aloe and arnica and mint; realizing all at once that he's incredibly turned on, not quite hard but getting there, arousal a liquid pool of intoxication that starts someplace around his heart and gut and grows out to suffuse every nerve ending. Drunk on the scent of Chris, the feel of Chris, solid and real and loving him, at his back, always and always.

He takes Chris's hand. Tugs his husband into the bedroom. As almost an afterthought, wriggles hips strategically. The towel hits the floor along the way, a foot from the end of the bed.

Chris, wearing jeans and his oldest blue henley and a concerned-but-immediately-interested expression, catches his breath.

 

Chris is an artist, a lover, gentle as a lamb with a will of iron the way his mama raised him. When he and Sebastian first started down the slippery slope to entwining themselves so completely in each other, it had been hard to reconcile the part of Chris that cringes away from violence and the part of Sebastian that has to have it, that was raised with it, that hasn't until recently known anything else. Chris had taken to slipping into Sebastian's gym after work to watch Sebastian practice, curling up in a corner with his sketchbook and too much coffee, and he'd been struck by how fucking beautiful he was. Sebastian had been twenty, then, compact muscle and long, lithe body, and he'd moved with a dancer's grace. It'd been stunning to see, almost as stunning as the smile that'd lit up his sweaty face every time he caught Chris's eye.

The first time Chris saw him in the ring in an actual fight, he'd had to leave halfway through. Clean as it might've been, watching someone he loves take a hit wasn't something Chris had been prepared for. Watching the way Sebastian almost seemed to…to _crave_ it had put a wedge between them for months.

Chris gets it now. As much as he's ever going to, anyway. Sebastian grew up in and out of foster homes and then on the streets, knows what desperation is in a way Chris never will. Learning to fight was a survival tactic and he's honed it into something good, something he's proud of, something _Chris_ is proud of. 

Doesn't make it easy to see him black and blue, though, and equally doesn't make it any less frustrating when Sebastian falls back on old habits and tries to hide. Still, the wriggle of his hips, towel hitting the floor and Sebastian crawling naked onto their bed, sending Chris a decidedly impish, hot look over his shoulder, helps a little.

Sebastian sprawls on his back, still holding himself gingerly. He flicks on the bedside lamp so the glow splashes over him and Chris's hands itch for his charcoal and a sketchbook.

Sebastian tilts his head back to bare his neck, opens his legs a little. He's half-hard, all the tension drained out of him. It's not often he lets Chris take care of him, and Chris isn't gonna waste the opportunity.

He strips off his henley, unfastens his jeans and lets them drop. Sebastian wets his lips and Chris grins. "Lemme get the stuff," he says, gesturing back toward the bathroom where the salve is.

Sebastian cracks a grin and drawls, "You got all the stuff I need right here, baby."

Chris laughs and Sebastian ducks his head, smiling, and kicks the rumpled sheets further down the bed, which apparently requires him to arch his back like he's in the throes of ecstasy. Chris makes a strangled, hungry sound in his throat. Salve. Salve first, and then he'll take Sebastian apart so slow and thorough Sebastian won't even remember what pain is.

And there's a sequence to that plan, an art, and Chris knows about art. He might sometimes trip over his words and get anxious in meetings, but he understands narrative and story-boards and the lines of a body, graceful flowing of anatomy through animation cels. Sebastian's a story, too, one woven in old scars - physical, emotional - and startling good humor and the uncanny ability to slide under Chris's skin, kick all the anxiety out of the way, and replace it with joy.

Right now that's Chris's job, though. Pain eased away. Only pleasure left. Because Sebastian'll permit that from him.

Not from anyone else. No one since Sebastian's mother, and oh Chris knows that story too, how she'd given everything, _everything_ , to get her son to America and a better life. He's been permitted entry into that tale as well. He's honored. As ever, gazing at his husband, he runs out of words.

He ducks into the bathroom, runs back, runs over to the bed. Sebastian's giving him that devastatingly wide-eyed gaze of appreciation, and it would make Chris blush except that it's so damn genuine, like Sebastian's truly never seen anything or anyone else he's ever craved this way.

He tries to send that expression right back, with his whole heart. Must be close enough; his husband grins.

"Yeah, well," Chris says, "lie down, you can wait for a minute and let me do this, we're gonna take it slow," and the grin unfurls even more. Wicked temptation at sunset. Folklore and incongruous fairy-sprites peeking around New York skyscrapers. "Slow, you say…"

"Yep. Think of it as training." He scoops a bit of green silkiness out of the jar. His fingers tingle, cooled. Foreplay, every bit of it: the scent of herbs and mint, the naked stretch of Sebastian's muscles, the way pale turquoise eyes follow every shine of salve along Chris's hand.

They both swallow in unplanned unison. The bedroom air heats up conspiratorially.

He touches Sebastian cautiously despite the simmering need. They both know any pressure'll hurt, and it does; Sebastian catches breath between teeth. Chris murmurs apologies and doesn't stop, fingertips lightly smoothing comfort over vicious purple and black. Hip, stomach, side: all the places crying out for healing. This is what he can do, what Sebastian'll accept. More than what Sebastian normally does accept. Meeting those eyes, he knows it's good.

He can tell the second the numbing ingredient kicks in; Sebastian gasps, eyes closing for a moment. Won't be enough to completely remove a hurt that deep, but it's got to be twenty times better, or infinitely better, judging from the quiet moan of relief, which shouldn't be obscene enough to make Chris's cock ache but is. Even more so when Sebastian opens those eyes, smirks at him and his cock, and makes the sound again.

Chris traces fingertips softly, so softly, around the edge of the worst bruise. Not pain, but the promise of it, mingled with tenderness; that's one of Sebastian's unfailing triggers, that paradox of sensory input, and while Chris doesn't always feel like going there, sometimes he does. Right now, at this moment, he does.

He paints lines in shimmering salve over tanned Romanian skin. They both watch his hand.

Sebastian's cock's rock-hard at this point, arching up against the lovely flat plane of his stomach. He doesn't move because Chris has asked him not to, though he does pointedly glance down at himself and smile, and Chris loves him helplessly wholeheartedly unreservedly.

He kisses the inside of Sebastian's knee, one of the few unbruised places; Sebastian laughs, and Chris sketches a heart in that spot, a study in messy adoration and aloe, the mediums of their fairy-tale. Sebastian lifts a hand, half-reaching for him before remembering; Chris says, "I didn't mean you couldn't move at _all_ , just, um, not a lot, okay," and walks his hand along that taut thigh. There's not enough salve left on his hand for numbing to matter, but there is a mild crackle of mint and coolness; when he closes his hand around the base of Sebastian's cock, they both shiver.

Kneeling above him, jar of wonderful healing hastily shoved to a bedside table, Chris looks down, smiles, lets more of his weight rest on Sebastian's thighs, sitting back. Fingers slickly teasing the length of him, still deliberate, still gentle. No rush. "Slow," he reminds them both, and skims his other hand over the bruise he's just treated, palm hovering flat and broad above wounded flesh. Not touching. Not quite. Enough to prickle every atom between them into awareness.

“Slow,” Sebastian grumbles, plus something affectionately frustrated in Romanian. Chris raises eyebrows. “Did you just call me an…overprotective goat?”

“Goats enjoy sex,” Sebastian says. “Which you and I are, you note, not yet enjoying. A nanny goat, possibly.” But he’s smiling, and his eyes, when they catch Chris’s and linger, say _thank you, I love you, I love this with you._

Answering both, Chris tells him, “I can live with that,” and leans down to kiss him, bracing himself with both arms, no weight on Sebastian’s body at all. Sebastian gazes up at him, caged in by Chris’s biceps, lying unafraid underneath him; Chris’s heart threatens to spill over with love and gratitude and the knowledge that Sebastian trusts someone – trusts _him_ – that much, these days.

“I want you,” Chris says, and Sebastian smiles more, tilts his head, a wordless invitation: go on. So Chris does.

Chris tends to top more of the time, but not every time; it’s really about a sixty-forty split. Sebastian loves the intensity of Chris’s hands on him, in him; shamelessly loves feeling opened up and taken and cherished, or at least he’s shameless about it now, letting Chris know exactly what he needs. He likes that edge of pain and pleasure, sometimes, riding the adrenaline-filled line between too much and not enough, the place where broken-rainbow edges suffuse all his senses. Chris knows that. Chris loves that, shared between them.

Chris also knows and loves the times when Sebastian comes home after a win, laughing with giddy triumph and exhilaration, and pins Chris to the bed and licks him and teases him and fucks him silly. Chris has on more than one occasion shown up near the end of a punishing workout, smirked at his husband, and casually murmured, “Not wearin’ underwear,” and ended up naked and bent over in one of the gym’s private showers.

It’s all good. They’re always good. Even on the days that come with bruises, the good’s bedrock underneath.

He lunges sideways, unearths their topmost bottle of lube—chocolate-flavored, okay, evidently Sebastian’s been shopping again—and makes short work of readying himself. He’s _already_ ready, has been since Sebastian’d lost that obliging towel, and they both groan in unison when he slips slick fingers inside himself.

“No moving,” he adds, in case Sebastian’s forgotten; from the merry scowl in blue eyes, the reminder’s necessary. Sebastian sighs melodramatically, but the motion makes his chest rise and fall, thundercloud bruises flickering; and Chris’s heart twinges again, melancholy and fond.

Sebastian follows the half-serious command, though, watching him with surprising graveness as if trying to memorize every line, every expression, every twitch when Chris works himself open on his own hand. No words. Only hushed intent reverence, hands lying obediently above his head on the pillow.

Chris, blushing a little – and, hell, where’s that coming from; not like they’ve not done this before, but somehow this feels important, this feels _right_ – offers, “You can touch me,” and Sebastian’s hands’re lifting before he even finishes, coming up to grip his hips and steady him as he gets into position. Their eyes meet; Sebastian’s mouth crooks into a breathless blissful smile that Chris is well aware matches the one on his own face, and in the wake of that smile Chris sinks down, careful but swift, taking him inside.

He’s continuing to be careful, as much as he can; he starts out not moving too much, but _God_ Sebastian feels amazing in him, thick and hard and nudging up deeper with each arch of hips off of the bed. Chris moans inadvertently at the next thrust, rocking back into it, riding him; Sebastian grins and frees one hand from Chris’s left hip to wrap around his cock. The air tastes like aloe and nighttime and sex and the clean scent of Sebastian’s shampoo. The bedroom’s warm and safe and lit up in evening gold. They’ve kicked the blankets and the top sheet all the way to the foot of the bed, where fluffy quilting’s barely hanging on, mostly in order to ogle the show.

“I love you,” Chris says, has to say, means with all his heart. “I love you.”

“I love you,” Sebastian whispers back, “too,” and thrusts up and hits _that_ spot, making Chris’s vision spark and shimmer with prisms. Chris, gasping, manages – because he’s still in charge, dammit, _he’s_ the one giving orders about moving and not moving and not letting Sebastian exert himself – to pant, “Do that again—!”

Sebastian shivers under him, eyes drifting shut and then open, more languidly; he does it again, fucking up into Chris’s body, letting himself be the instrument of Chris’s pleasure, and a smile hovers around the corners of his mouth like he’s losing himself in dreamy sensation.

Chris wraps his hand over Sebastian’s on his own cock, directing the motion, slowing it down, drawing it out. He’s close, so close; but he wants Sebastian there first, wants to see blue eyes go wide and hazy with ecstatic delirium, and he works himself up and down on that iron length inside him, clenching down, tightening.

Sebastian chokes out a broken exclamation in Romanian, sounding desperate. Chris catches the word for _God_ in there, and _please_ ; and he tightens his grip on Sebastian’s hand and uses it to jerk himself off in rough strokes, where and how he wants it. Sebastian sobs his name and shudders under him, body tensing and coiling, so Chris whispers, “Come for me, come in me, like this, want you—” and Sebastian does.

The heat of Sebastian’s orgasm pulses through Chris’s entire body, flooding that tingling spot inside him with glory and radiating from his head to his toes, which, yes, completely curl. He arches his back and rocks his hips and revels in the feeling, and Sebastian whimpers under him, climax ebbing into pure overwhelming sensitivity, cock buried so deeply inside Chris.

Chris, with that tiny whimper echoing in his ears – with the way Sebastian’s continued trying to follow the order and keep fucking him, lifting hips from the sheets so his cock slides inside Chris’s body – can’t do anything other than come too, swept up in the awesome beauty of the man laid out beneath him.

He retains enough presence of mind to not simply collapse across his husband’s injured body in the aftermath. He flops over onto the long-suffering bed instead, and plasters himself all along Sebastian’s less injured side, being a source of heat, giving and sharing anchors of touch. Sebastian turns his head – his chest and stomach’re sticky and white-streaked with Chris’s release, which makes Chris want to jump up and down while beaming with proprietary happiness – and kisses him lightly, more a breath of air than anything else.

“Hi,” Chris says, grinning.

“Love you,” Sebastian says, somewhat weakly, sounding thoroughly content.

“Yep,” Chris agrees, tracing fingers over the line of his collarbone, the pulse-beat at the hollow of his throat. They’ll have to shower now, and he’ll end up reapplying cooling salve to wounded skin, and Sebastian’ll hurt for a while. But the bruise’ll heal. He knows it will.

The gold from his wedding ring catches lamplight and gleams; he can’t see Sebastian’s matching ring from this angle. But it’s there. Tangible. Real. “So…you know our anniversary’s next month.”

“I know.” Sebastian stretches a foot over to tap at Chris’s ankle. “I meant to ask you whether we should be making plans, or if you had to work…”

“About that,” Chris says, lazy and boneless and sated, fingers sketching a heart next to his husband’s nipple, “I was kinda thinking I could take a week or so off. I mean, if you want to, if you—I know you’ve got fights coming up, probably, I mean I don’t actually know, you haven’t told me your schedule for next month yet, so if you can’t, it’s fine, never mind—”

“In fact,” Sebastian says, maneuvering the arm he’s got folded around Chris so that long fingers end up petting Chris’s hair, “I’ve been thinking about taking a few weeks off too.”


End file.
